I first installed "Nadia" with Cinnamon on my HP Mini 311 netbook (my first modern experience with Linux); loved it, but it was slower than I would like. Tried Bodhi Linux but Enlightenment was a complete turn-off. So I installed LM14 Xfce - and thought I was done. Until I tried to print - 4 minutes to print a page. And of course I can't get network shares to stay persistent in Thunar. Frustrated, I tried "apt install nemo" and now I can boot into Cinnamon or Xfce; in Cinnamon I can print and see the network immediately, but even the 2D version is slow. In Thunar, well, it's still crippled.

So what do I really have now? Is LM14 Xfce running Cinnamon the same thing as just installing LM14 Cinnamon? Or are there other differences in the core system?

I'm also thinking of loading LXDE to see whether it combines the responsiveness of Xfce with the usefulness of Cinnamon. Are there other DE's I should try?

Great informative answer! Just to see I installed Cinnamon 14 alone then with XFCE on my flash drive and noticed the difference. Is there anyway to restrict Cinnamon to only using its own libraries or must one totally flush out XFCE (and how) to get the horsepower back? Also, where does MATE rate on your scale?

Thanks! Again, I'm just experimenting; once my above question is solved to see if such can be done, I'd like to move on replacing Cinnamon with MATE then, but can I do this via Synapse upgrade or have to re-install it on my flash drive which is a royal pain to do! Thanks!